The Bridges Series is a collaborative reading/speaking series sponsored by PVCC’s Creative Writing Program. The goal of The Bridges Series is to bring innovative and creative entrepreneurs as well as accomplished writers of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and other genres to campus. The series has featured award-winning poets and fiction writers, video game developers, advertising professionals, a ghost writer, and many others. One focus of the series is to feature local artists and artists and professionals from outside our city and state. The Fall 2017 Bridges Series features writers Patricia Murphy, Hedy Habra and Beth Cato.

Thursday, September 14th: Patricia Murphy

The Puma Press Room10:30am - 12:00pm

Patricia Colleen Murphy founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. Her book Hemming Flames (Utah State University Press, 2016) won the May Swenson Poetry Award judged by Stephen Dunn, and in 2017 won the Milt Kessler Poetry Award. A chapter from her memoir in progress was published as a chapbook by New Orleans Review. Her writing has appeared in many literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Quarterly West, American Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, Burnside Review, Poetry Northwest, Third Coast, Hobart, decomP, Midway Journal, Armchair/Shotgun, and Natural Bridge. She lives in Phoenix, AZ.

Thursday, October 19th: Hedy Habra

The Puma Press Room10:30am - 12:00pm

Hedy Habra has authored two poetry collections, Under Brushstrokes, finalist for the USA Best Book Award and the International Poetry Book Award, and Tea in Heliopolis, winner of the USA Best Book Award and finalist for the International Poetry Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American National Book Award's Honorable Mention and was finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her book of literary criticism, Mundos alternos y artisticos en Vargas Llosa explores the visual and interartistic elements in the Peruvian Nobel's narrative. A recipient of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Awards, she was a six-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her work appears in Cimarron Review, Te Bitter Oleander, Blue Fifth Review, Cider Press Review, Drunken Boat, Gargoyle, Nimrod, Poet Lore, World Literature Today and Verse Daily. She has a passion for art and teaches Spanish at Western Michigan University.

Thursday, November 16th: Beth Cato

The Puma Press Room10:30am - 12:00pm

Beth Cato hails from Hanford, California, but currently writes and bakes cookies in a lair west of Phoenix, Arizona. She shares the household with a hockey-loving husband, a numbers-obsessed son, and a cat the size of a canned ham. She's the author of THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER (a 2015 Locus Award finalist for First Novel) and THE CLOCKWORK CROWN (an RT Reviewers' Choice Finalist) from Harper Voyager. Her novella "Wings of Sorrow and Bone" was a 2016 Nebula nominee. BREATH OF EARTH begins a new steampunk series set in an alternate history 1906 San Francisco. Follow her at bethcato.com and on Twitter at @BethCato.

The Bridges Series is in partnership with The Entrepreneurship Education Center, the PVCC English Division, the Division of Fine & Performing Arts, The Buxton Library and Club Z.